Church Christmas Party / Goodbye to the Collins

This past Saturday we had our first Christmas party!  We attend a church on Sunday evenings that is a group of English-speaking ex-pats who do church together in the building of a German church.  We have been a part of this group since we moved here and truly enjoy the people and the fellowship we can have with them.  This is the same group of people we celebrated Thanksgiving with.  On Saturday, we had a Christmas party with them which also doubled as a goodbye party for the Collins family.  They have been ex-pats here for several years and are moving back to Arizona over the next few weeks.

The party was at Dave and Brenda's house which Brian and I had never been to.  They are originally from Zimbabwe and have 3 boys.  Dave is a teacher at a boarding school and they live on the campus.  It was wonderful to see their house and be shown all their animals by the boys!  Here's just some of the animals...Brian saw the rest of them, but didn't take any pictures.

Mama Cat

Birds

Snakes...ewww!

One of the three kittens

There was also a gecko, more snakes, more lizards, and tarantulas!

We started off by playing a game where each person in the circle writes a line of a story and then we read through the stories at the end.  It was quite hilarious!

(Dave, Carter, Brenda, Lisa, Jim)

 (Brenda, Lisa, Jim, Steve, Gus)

The boys had a great time putting wooden puzzles together.  Watch out...they're thinking!!

(Steve, Brian, Gus)

 (Carter, Jim, Lisa, Gus)

We made a book of pictures and notes to give to the Collins as they were leaving us.  Here is Lindsay working on the book.

And here is Jim and Lisa enjoying it after we gave it to them.

We had a wonderful potluck spread of food for dinner!  And very yummy desserts!

Ladies first!

(Lisa, Lindsay, Brenda, Kurt)

The kittens were everywhere and sooooo cute!!  If I wasn't allergic, I would have taken one home!

(James)

Lindsay and I brought some crafts to make for Christmas and only barely broke into them!  We started to learn how to make the German Christmas stars from my previous post.  Here is Brian with one in his hair. :)

Since it was a Christmas party, we had to sing carols!!  Dave played the piano while we all sang along.

 (Brian, Brenda, James, Lindsay)

Near the end of the party, one of Dave and Brenda's friends came over and brought Mark a late birthday present (his birthday was on Thanksgiving) - skis!!  Gus is a big skiier, so he helped Mark get them on and try them out.  They were practicing tricks in the living room and then headed outside to try them down a hill.  It was so much fun to watch them. :)

Gus then thought he should try on the skis himself...they didn't quite fit. :)

We had a great time at the party and will definitely miss the Collins!  We wish them God's blessings as they move back to Arizona!

Christmas Decorations

Last night, Brian and I worked on making some Christmas decorations since all of ours are in a storage unit in the US.  We made some paper chains and I worked on trying to figure out German Christmas stars.

The paper chains were pretty normal.  Brian cut the strips, I glued them together, and Brian hung them.  They look pretty good!

Today I hung a wooden Nativity picture that we bought at the Christmas market this past weekend.

Last night I figured out how to make the German Christmas stars that Lindsay was trying to teach me to do on Saturday night.  I figured out how to do the 3-D points and discovered that you can put 8 of them together to make a wreath.  I like making these!

Christmas Markets - Friedrichshafen

This past weekend, we went to the Friedrichshafen Christmas market twice!  We weren't doing anything on Friday night, so we decided to go check out the Christmas market.  It had just opened that day, so there were a lot of people there!  We walked around all the booths to see what they had and then decided to get some waffeln.  The waffeln were pretty good!  We didn't take our camera, so we didn't take any pictures that night, but we ended up back there on Saturday for lunch, so we took some pictures then.

On Saturday, we tried to go to the Langenargen Christmas market.  It's a very small town next to ours and their Christmas market was just this past weekend.  I had never looked at what time it started and we ended up being there about 3 hours too early, so we decided to go to the Friedrichshafen market again.  We did go back to Langenargen on Sunday afternoon though and got to see the Christmas market for a bit.

We had lunch on Saturday at the Subway in Friedrichshafen (a little American food every once in a while is nice!).  We then headed back to the Christmas market because we wanted to get something sweet for dessert.  We ended up at the chocolate covered fruit booth.  I got chocolate covered grapes on a stick and Brian got a chocolate covered banana on a stick.  They were very good!  We didn't take any pictures, but we hope to get them again, so we'll take some pictures then.  :) 

While eating our fruit, we checked out the best part of the Friedrichshafen Christmas market - the Nativity!  We had seen this the night before, but couldn't take any pictures because we didn't have the camera and it was too dark. 

The main Nativity part was pretty standard except for two children that we're not entirely sure who they are supposed to represent.

The BEST part of the Nativity was outside of this little area.  There is another fence around the Nativity that holds sheep!!  There are 3 adult sheep and the cutest little baby sheep!!

I decided on Friday night that I wanted to cuddle with the little baby sheep, so I needed to figure out a way to steal it so that I could do that!  I haven't come up with any good ideas yet, but I have until December 19 to figure something out.  Any suggestions are welcome!

We then took some pictures for my mom's class because we are going to be teaching them about the Christmas markets sometime before Christmas.  We thought they would enjoy seeing the candy/nut booth.  :)

We also got some potato/sausage thing at this booth that cooks it in these HUGE pans!

And of course, a few pictures of the Christmas market in general.

Christmas Markets - Ravensburg

One of the German Christmas traditions that we have been looking forward to is the Christmas Markets.  Last year we went with German friends of ours to the Christmas Market in Chicago and have been excited to see the real German ones ever since!

Most Germans towns have a Christmas Market sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Smaller towns may only have them for one weekend (like Langenargen which is the next town over from us) and larger towns usually have them from the last weekend in November up until Christmas Eve.  Others will have it some time within this range.  Some are open during the week and others are only open on the weekends.

So far we have been to 2 Christmas Markets and hope to go to another one this afternoon and a few more in the next few weeks.  There are some things that are usually pretty similar about them.  They all have booths that sell different things.  Some of these could be scarves/hats/gloves, candy, chocolate covered fruit, gluhwein, waffeln, wooden nativity sets, homemade wooden toys, candles, pizzas, and other homemade goodies.  It is interesting to see the different things that are at each market.  They also seem to usually have a life-size Nativity, sometimes with real animals. 

Last week Saturday, we went to the Christmas Market in Ravensburg.  We had been to Ravensburg the first full day we were here with Brian's boss, but haven't gone back.  We knew they had a nice Christmas market and it's not too far of a drive, so we went for the day.

Here's the life-size Nativity in Ravensburg, but the live animals were in a different place.

Some of the booths in Ravensburg were just white tents and others were the normal wooden structures.

There was also a pretty sweet building that had all of its windows numbered like an Advent calendar.  We were actually there at the end of November, so none of the windows were open to see what was behind them, but we thought it looked pretty cool anyway.

Two of the traditional foods for Christmas markets are Gluhwein and Waffeln.  Gluhwein is a type of mulled wine that is served hot.  Brian had some, but since neither of us are big fans of wine, it wasn't our favorite.  Waffeln are basically waffles served with cinnamon and powdered sugar.  This was definitely my favorite!  Kind of like a German elephant ear!

The city was absolutely beautiful once it started to get dark!  Lots of Christmas lights came on all over!